Islamabad: A prominent opposition lawmaker in Pakistan has blamed the country’s Army for “provoking” the 1965 war with India as also the Kargil battle.“It was our Army that provoked the 1965 war with India as it did in Kargil,” Atezaz Ahesan, PPP leader and the lead counsel for suspended Chief justice Iftikhar M Chaudhry, said at the launch of Ayesha Siddiqa’s book Military Inc: Inside Pakistan’s Military Economy on Friday.
He said youth in Pakistan were taught that India was an enemy and it was necessary to equip the army to combat it. “But we should remember that national security states are ultimately destroyed,” he said and cited the example of the erstwhile Soviet Union.
Ahesan said weapons were no guarantee for security of a country as the former Soviet Union, which had over 40,000 nuclear warheads, did not exist today. “Today the Army is in full control in Pakistan. They have tightened their grip on all important institutions and are occupants of all national resources,” ‘The Nation’ quoted him as saying